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THE 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 



OUR REASONS FOR IT 



BY 



CHARLES FLETCHER DOLE 

AUTHOR OF U THE COMING PEOPLE," " THEOLOGY 

OF CIVILIZATION," " THE RELIGION OF 

A GENTLEMAN," ETC. 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



luBHARY of WnSSeSSJ 

jul 25 iwa 

GLASS v/>? AXc, Wj. 
COPY U, 



"*»* 



Copyright, 1906, 1908 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & GO. 



<? PREFACE 



ci 



I have undertaken in the following pages to state as 
simply as possible the reasons that urge me to a belief 
in the reality of the immortal life. It may be of in- 
terest to readers if I say a few words at the beginning 
about the " personal equation " in my own case. It has 
always been extremely easy for me to see the difficul- 
ties that arise in the way of a belief in immortality. 
I have taken pains never to escape the sight of these 
difficulties, but rather to seek them out and measure 
them at their full value. I am unhappy if I have an 
intimation that there lies somewhere any formidable 
consideration, with which I am not familiar, touching 
an important subject. I hold that no man knows one 
side or aspect of a question, unless he knows its other 
sides also. 

Moreover, perhaps by some fault of temperament, I do 
not happen to have the intense yearning that many pro- 
fess for an endless existence. I feel about a future life 
as one might feel in regard to setting forth upon an un- 
tried voyage ; for example, to some distant star. So far 
as I have confidence that I am a citizen of a rational uni- 
verse, I can conceive that the unknown voyage will be 
worth all the trouble it may cost. The venture stirs my 
interest. But otherwise, I have little sense of clinging 
to life, merely in order to live. Thus, though I heartily 
enjoy life, "taking it all in all," yet I have no eager de- 
sire to live however comfortably to great age, and I 
should distinctly deprecate for myself or for others 
the fulfilment of a certain noted Eussian biologist's 

iii 



IV PREFACE 

prophecy that mankind may learn to extend the average 
lifetime to a hundred and fifty years ! 

So far, then, as I feel desire for life, the desire is that 
my life may count for something, and have use or value. 
Why should any one care to have existence at all, unless 
his life contributes in some way to the sum of the worth 
of the universe ? Life, now and here, interests me, be- 
cause it is social ; that is, we are each able to serve, help, 
and enrich one another, and to increase the total wealth 
and welfare of humanity. It is only on some such terms 
as these that life seems worth living anywhere. 

I have asked myself whether I would not be content 
if I might in some way pass over into that " immortality 
of influence" of which we sometimes hear. I think that 
I could be content, provided this were the best use to 
which I could be put, and provided this influence itself 
were more than a breath destined to pass away forever 
as soon as our tiny planet cools away. In other words, 
we can bear death, for ourselves, if we are not wanted 
anywhere. But we do wish to be able to respect the 
world we live in, and we could hardly respect a universe 
that created a Socrates, a Michael Angelo, or an Epicte- 
tus only to destroy him, as the early gods are reputed to 
have devoured their own offspring. 

This brings me frankly to confess to a certain bias. I 
own that the more I know about life, the more I desire 
to discover rationality in it. I had rather be a citizen 
for even a brief period in a significant and intelligent 
world than to live forever in a meaningless world. I 
had rather be able to look out for one day on the possi- 
bilities of an infinite universe than to possess millenniums 
circumscribed within bounds of time and place. I can- 
not help this kind of bias. It seems to be involved in 



PREFACE V 

the nature of mind. Other men gladly make the same 
confession. Here is one of the facts of human nature 
that thought has to reckon with. 

It is as if there were something in us, like Prometheus 
in the ancient myth, that says in the face of all merely 
brute powers : Break us down if you choose ; annihilate 
us; yet we are more and greater than you; we defy you 
to hurt us. For we are the offspring of reason, and our 
supreme desire is toward the good and the beautiful. 
What a marvellous thing, on any ground, that such a 
conception has entered into Man's mind! 

I have owned to a certain bias. Does the fact of such 
a bias constitute a disqualification against the student, 
the investigator, or the thinker who frankly acknowl- 
edges it and makes allowance accordingly ? I think not. 
A man consults a physician upon the question of his 
health. He has a bias in favor of being found consti- 
tutionally sound. All the more careful is he to choose 
an expert physician, who will make no mistake even in 
favor of pronouncing him well. He will insist that his 
physician shall tell him the whole truth. 

In fact, the very word " philosophy " implies a bias. 
One of its roots means love. The true philosopher loves 
order, rationality, beauty, unity, goodness. He has a 
faith, that is, a bias toward belief that truth will be 
found one with the good. He is all the more bound, 
because of tins bias, to insist on the whole truth and 
nothing but the truth. Like the man who ties his boat 
to its mooring, he is bound to test the holding power of 
his rope. If he can break it, he has no use for it. So 
the man who loves truth is never afraid to put it to rig- 
orous tests. If he can break it down, he has no longer 
use for it. 



VI PREFACE 

I am aware that all this involves a majestic assump- 
tion. We suppose that there is such a reality as truth; 
we suppose that we live in a reasonable or logical world, 
and that our thinking follows certain intellectual laws. 
We suppose that our philosophical bias in favor of order 
and unity, like our instinct toward food, is a part of 
the reality of the world. We suppose that the sense 
of duty to follow truth, which honest men everywhere 
recognize, is also real. If this is " reasoning in a circle," 
it is the only possible mode of reasoning. 

We are able, however, to throw our minds "out of 
gear," and to suppose invalid our splendid assump- 
tion of a realm of order and reality. We can become 
thorough-going agnostics. What happens now ? It fol- 
lows that we have ceased for the time to be thinkers. 
We have got out of the world of logic into a dream 
world where no logic binds things together. Talk about 
" truth " as we may, we cease to feel any obligations to 
follow truth or speak truth. Terms and words that had 
meaning and value before, such as right and duty, now 
fade out of sight. All that remains to us is to be ob- 
servers of sensations. To become thinkers again means 
to take up the old assumption, and to go on again as if 
we belonged to the ideal realm of logic, order, beauty, 
truth, duty, and unity. 

Surely no one claims that the attitude of intellectual 
agnosticism, except as a temporary experiment, is whole- 
some or fruitful. It is like holding one's breath, — a 
desirable power to use on occasion. But the moral and 
ideal life is always surging in us and compelling us to 
breathe. The more deeply we breathe, the more fully we 
live. 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

OUE EEASONS FOE IT 



There are doubtless more people to-day than ever 
before in the history of the world who are in doubt 
whether they have any right to hope for immortality. 
Sometimes, they want so much to believe as to be 
reluctant to open the question at all or to face any 
facts which may seem to militate against their faith. 
Nevertheless, they are not comfortable in this irrational 
unwillingness to think about or discuss the greatest of 
subjects. Others have a vague idea that the hope of 
immortality is a matter of sentiment or blind faith, but 
not quite respectable in the realm of intelligence. Even 
high-minded men seem to feel that a duty to truth may 
compel them to smother a natural longing in their hearts 
to believe in immortality. They do not fairly credit the 
possibility that reason, truth, and reality may lie on the 
side of this hope and not against it. 

Still further, men are very shy of the supposed teach- 
ings of science. They are shocked to hear that certain 
scientific men doubt or disbelieve in immortality. Thus, 
it was remarked after a certain Ingersoll Lecture upon 
Immortality at Harvard University that the faces of the 
listeners, as they went out of the hall, bore a look of 
sadness, as if they had heard the death sentence pro- 

1 



2 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

noimced. Did these people really expect that a man of 
science could bring chemical or physical facts to throw 
any light on the problem of immortality ? 

The fact is, that we are all on one level as regards the 
great questions that concern our common humanity. 
The study of ancient documents, acquaintance with 
Greek or Hebrew, familiarity with the terms of philoso- 
phy, expert knowledge of soils or material elements, 
no more than high office in church or state, gives a man 
special standing above his fellows to tell them what they 
ought to do, or what they must believe, or what limit 
they must set to their ideals or their hopes. The ordi- 
nary observer thousands of years ago knew practically 
as much as the most learned physician knows to-day 
about the fact of death. To all visible appearances it 
ended life then as now. Nevertheless, in the face of 
all appearances to the contrary, hosts of people, both the 
unlettered and the thoughtful, have believed, and still 
believe, that death is not the end of man. It is possible 
to trace the development and the history of the phases 
of this extraordinary belief. But before the main ques- 
tion, whether or not this vast trend of belief points to a 
reality, the expert man of science only can say as he does 
say, that if his science gives him no reason to urge in the 
affirmative, it likewise gives him no knowledge more than 
the rest of us have to the contrary. The supreme con- 
dition for wise and sane thinking here — the same 
as on every subject touching human welfare — is the 
fullest possible understanding of the facts that consti- 
tute and characterize human life, both as it commonly 
is and at its highest and best. We want also the largest 
intellectual hospitality and fearlessness. 

There are certain concessions which must occur to 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 3 

every one who begins to think about immortality. Let 
us range them up in clear sight and discover frankly how 
weighty they are. Doubtless if we knew nothing else 
but these things, we should not dream of immortality. 

In the first place, modern science has in no respect 
changed, for better or worse, the ordinary doctrine of 
plain common sense touching the fact of physical death. 
To the unaided senses death is death, the cessation of all 
consciousness. No one certainly is able to see how life 
can continue. 

Moreover, so far as any apparent evidence goes for the 
continued existence of myriads of " souls " or " spirits/' 
who have passed through the gate of death, this evidence 
is of the most meagre character. No one can show that 
such a mode of continued life is impossible. But most 
of us, not being trained as detectives, are obliged to wait 
for the discovery of modes of communication that will 
bridge the gulf that now surely seems to divide "the 
quick" from "the dead." Meanwhile the general style 
of the alleged messages from the spirit-world is not such 
as to make continued existence there seem precious or 
desirable by comparison with the best actual values of 
life in this world. It is pathetic to suppose the wisest 
and best among "the mighty dead" are so helplessly balked 
in their desires to reach their earthly friends as at the most 
only to convey to them dreary platitudes and trivialities, 
— the mere echoes of what we have already heard. 

It might be said that one tremendous event in human 
history — the resurrection of Jesus — ought to set aside 
all question. It is a striking fact that during the ages 
when few perhaps doubted the story of the resurrection, 
the fear of death weighed on men's minds as at no other 
period. Few out of millions seem really to have taken 



4 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

pleasure in the hope of immortality. The time has now 
come when a in an, even though he be a member of a 
Christian church, wants more than the tradition of an 
event far away in time and space, which itself needs to 
be demonstrated. Men feel as an old minister in Boston 
once remarked to a friend, "I wish as long as I live to 
cling to the belief in the resurrection of Jesus, but I do 
not see how the next generation can do this." And they 
probably add, as this minister did, "I am very thankful 
that my hope in immortality does not depend upon the 
resurrection." It is at least highly significant that when 
a notable leader in a great evangelical church, Dr. George 
A. Gordon, presents his best thought in his book, "The 
Witness to Immortality," he takes pains to establish the 
theistic faith by philosophy, before he adduces his reasons 
for believing in the resurrection of Jesus. Neither is it 
common for the professors in theological schools to make 
immortality stand or fall upon the testimony of the men 
and women who are reputed in the Gospels to have seen 
Jesus after his death. For throughout history too many 
marvellous stories of like events have been told to per- 
mit us to rest any precious conviction upon such testi- 
mony. At any rate, whether we like it or not, we must 
concede that this is the habitual attitude of the modern 
mind. To state it in positive terms, we are convinced 
that the only sure ground for the hope of immortality 
must be in the fact that we are in some true sense im- 
mortal by nature. For unless we thus possess immortal- 
ity, no miracle could demonstrate this fact. 

Again, we admit that no one can see how the transition 
can be made into any other life than this which we here 
know — a life involved at every breath and thought with 
the senses and physical conditions. This element of 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 5 

utter mystery is already contained in the present life. 
Who knows at all how it is enabled to proceed? Who 
knows even what the senses are of which we lightly speak ? 
Who in this era of astounding transition regarding all 
physical theory can draw a line between matter and mind, 
or even say that the most solid material is not in reality 
as subtle, elusive, and invisible as thought is, or will, or 
spirit ? Who shall say that spirit is not the more com- 
prehensive word, rather than matter or physics ? Every- 
thing goes to show this as likely. The question of the 
"how," pushed far enough, would seem no more to 
threaten the splendid possibilities of an immortal life 
than it threatens to destroy the actuality of our present 
existence. 

We must add that we frankly call immortality a hope. 
This is what it has usually been, and what it is quite 
possible that it always must remain. From its nature 
it must be a hope. So far as it lies in the future it is 
beyond our sight. If it means little, — the playing of 
harps and pianos and endless gossip, — we might be told 
by one of its messengers what it is like. But the more 
it means, the less could any one — even God himself — 
tell us in advance what or how it may be. In this re- 
spect it would only follow the analogy of the profoundest 
experiences of the present life. Who could have made 
known to us beforehand the mysteries, and yet the indis- 
putable facts, of friendship, of fatherhood or motherhood, 
of the high joys of art and poetry ? 

It follows, doubtless, that our minds may sway on this 
subject, as on other subjects of human interest, all the 
way from more or less wonder and uncertainty to various 
degrees of conviction and confidence. Some may even 
sway back and forth from a positive to a negative atti- 



6 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

tude. Few minds, perhaps, rest solidly either on the side 
of the denial of immortality, or again on the side of such 
absolute belief, as, for example, Theodore Parker and 
Tennyson were wont to express. Even Whittier seems 
to have wavered in his belief. The fact of such wavering 
on the part of many minds may as well be frankly ad- 
mitted. It seems to be a law governing our changing 
moods, that when we suffer depression, our concern, 
whether with or without adequate ground, touches the 
subject that we care most for. Even the millionnaire 
may thus apprehend that he is coming to want. 

Once more, it must be confessed to be a burden upon 
our thought of immortality that there are so many of us. 
No one now knows how long the world has been the 
habitation of man, but the increasing succession of the 
generations of human beings of all ages and degrees of 
intelligence, from the level of animals upward, quite 
baffles our imagination. And yet tremendous as is the 
burden of our thought, the fundamental weight of the 
mystery consists in the fact which we all admit ; namely, 
this vast procession of toiling, suffering, aspiring human 
lives. We have not only the question, What will become 
of them? but the question, Why are they here on this 
vast march of life at all? 

Let me pass on to present as rapidly as possible the 
great sweep of the reasons that forever, and always more 
and more powerfully, impel the mind to the hope of 
immortality. 

Eirst, I am impressed with the fact that man's life not 
only belongs to the realm of the senses and what we call 
material things, but it belongs essentially, in respect to 
all that most concerns us as human, to the invisible realm 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 7 

of thought or spirit. Whatever we name this realm of 
being, even if we shy at such a makeshift word as " spirit " 
to describe it, the fact faces us that we are men, not 
merely by virtue of the circulation of blood in our veins, 
but by virtue of feelings, ideas, aspirations, convictions, 
states of consciousness, which cannot be weighed or meas- 
ured, but which are at least as real as anything that we 
can see or touch. We play with numbers, we poetize, 
we behold visions of beauty, we love and we forgive, we 
dream of human welfare to be worked out centuries be- 
yond our time; we philosophize over vast schemes of 
optimism or pessimism. This is simply to say that we 
inhabit an ideal or spiritual realm. 

We need not now enter into the question of what 
this realm of spirit is. We need not insist that there is 
any division between it and the realm where visible 
"things " appear and animals breathe and move. Grant, 
if you choose, that some profound underlying substance 
makes the realm of spirit one with the realm of matter. 
We only say that the realm of thought and spirit exists. 
You cannot live a human life and ignore it. Its facts 
are at least as real as any facts are. That they cannot 
be measured by the instruments of the laboratory does 
not touch their validity. We know that we love our 
children, when we cannot even see their faces, much 
less see the motion of our love. The idea or hope of 
immortality obviously belongs in this realm of man's 
life. Whatever you think of it, it is on this range and 
not on the range of food values that we have to discuss it. 

Next, it occurs to us that the presence and prevalence 
of the idea of immortality in such a world as this is a 
wonderful thing. It is wonderful if the spiritual inter- 



8 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

pretation of the universe is true. But it is also wonder- 
ful, if this is only a material world and the idea of im- 
mortality has not a shred of reality behind it. I am 
aware of the nature of the hints and suggestions through 
which students of the childhood of the race tell us that 
this idea may have grown up. Grant all that they say. 
The idea in itself is none the less magnificent and won- 
derful. Suppose it to have been born on the side of 
man's senses and out of material environment. The 
wonder is that it found a sort of soil in man's mind to 
grow in and to become what it is now at its highest, — a 
majestic and daring hope, free of selfishness, noble and 
ennobling, setting aside all bounds of space and time. This 
is a most extraordinary product to come out of the mere 
play of animal tissue! You can no more explain it in 
this blundering way than you can explain your convic- 
tion of a proposition in geometry or any other profound 
fact of consciousness by the motion of particles in your 
brain. The movement of the particles, whatever it may 
be, is subordinate to the spiritual reality which they only 
serve to image or register. Why do atoms of matter so 
move together as to register and impress thoughts and 
ideas ? 

Again, it is worth while to pass over on occasion to the 
side of absolute scepticism, and to look over the precipice 
which, in the denial of the hope of immortality, now awaits 
the mind. The mind is not between a difficult belief 
and an easy doubt. The doubt is itself gigantic. Can 
we believe that the march of all the generations of man- 
kind has been the way of death only ? Can we believe 
that the noblest and holiest, the grand men of genius, 
the leaders and helpers of mankind, have perished like 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 9 

so many cattle? Then we must translate all life into 
the terms of final death. " The Choir Invisible, " and 
everything else, disappears and " leaves not a wrack be- 
hind." The more we contemplate this negative interpre- 
tation of the universe, the more tremendous is the strain 
on our intelligence. Scepticism becomes at least as diffi- 
cult as faith seemed to be. 

The fact is, this is a world of values with all sorts of 
gradations upward. The more we investigate and pon- 
der, the more clearly these values emerge and, indeed be- 
come necessary to thought. It is a workable theory of 
the world that its chief use, and happiness, and aim, so far 
as man is concerned, consists in learning values and know- 
ing how to direct them. The child or the savage plays 
with counters and beads. Presently he learns the uses 
of all sorts of tools and building materials. Why does he 
build and learn to toil ? His eyes are now toward the 
meaning of home and citizenship, of friendship and love, 
of justice, mercy, and humanity. The happiness of a 
Franklin, for instance, rises from indulgence in sensual 
things to a quite new value of happiness; namely, the de- 
sire to do good, that sets all sensual things under his 
feet. There is a limit to the lower kind of values. You 
can buy them off with other values of their own kind, or 
you can exhaust them. There is really no limit to the 
values that appear in the realm of the spirit. You can- 
not buy a mother's love or a patriot's devotion. You can- 
not exhaust the justice in a community by overdrafts. 
There is doubtless what must be called, for want of any 
better term, an " infinite " element in the higher ranges 
of values, as if gold and jewels were but figures and im- 
ages to set these nobler values forth. It is the mark of 



10 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

manhood or intelligence, not to doubt this, but rather to 
recognize it. 

The idea of immortality is an assertion of the inde- 
structible worth of the values that characterize humanity 
at its best. The lower values, even force and motion and 
the atoms of matter, appear to persist, even while they 
change their forms. At any rate, they effect something 
in exact proportion to their bigness. They all make the 
way and lead up to the fruitage of the universe in its 
high values of truth, wisdom, justice, and good will. To 
affirm " immortality " is simply to say that in a world 
where other and lower values all accomplish something, 
and pass on and up in the trend of their action, where 
even a grain of sand on the seashore has its place and 
does not exist for naught, where the spring flower has its 
chance to die in order to live again in the form of fruit 
at the harvest, the greatest of all values, to which the 
others are mere counters, must likewise go on in their 
proper sphere and not come to naught. My mind, as it 
takes the path of least resistance, is forced to take this 
track in its thought. What hopeless confusion of all 
that we know about values it would be, if we had to think 
that after a few seons, while the frozen earth still kept 
every atom intact and registered in its material every 
impact of force, all the high values that had made it 
once worth while to study its elements and its forces — the 
humane and spiritual values that men had been working out 
with their toil, their tears, their blood, had utterly vanished ! 
This is to say that all virtue and goodness have the 
worth of the pigment of a rose leaf, or the tint of a sum- 
mer cloud. Our intelligence reacts from such a doctrine. 
Our intelligence then reacts toward the idea of immor- 
tality. 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 11 

There is no such thing as justice, or truth, or love, in 
the abstract. All these are the terms by which we de- 
scribe persons. Where no persons are, there is no con- 
ceivable thought, or righteousness, or will, either good or 
bad. Expel if you can the idea of personality from the 
universe, and it is doubtful whether anything would be 
left, for everything appears to exist in some relation or 
other to conscious and intelligent, that is personal, life. 
What is force that represents no directing will ? What 
is matter, except the crude stuff with which intelligence 
shapes thought and expresses itself? There is no intel- 
ligible attribute or quality in things, in weight or color 
or taste, except as some person either uses or perceives 
the attribute. Its existence has no significance without 
an intelligence ; that is, a person into whose consciousness 
it can enter. This is to say, that the visible world some- 
how fits into the spiritual fact of personality, and the 
universe breaks up with personality taken out of it. 

Be this as it may, it is evident that immortality is 
and must be personal immortality. There is often hazi- 
ness of thought on this point, as if personal qualities 
might be immortal and persons cease to be. What, for 
example, would become of " immortal " righteousness in 
a world where no persons existed ? How does any one 
suppose an abstract immortal "influence" would leap 
out of a dead planet to effect action in some star in the 
system of Sirius ? 

When we speak of personality, however, we tread in 
the realm of mystery. There is nothing so real and 
precious. We are as sure of our personality as we are of 
any fact, but it cannot be weighed or measured, and it 
can hardly be described. It is as mysterious in man as 
it is in the thought of God, no more and no less. It does 



12 THE EOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

not consist in bodily form, but it shines through the form 
and uses it, as God may be conceived to shine through and 
to use the structure of the universe. The most that we 
know about it in man is that it is not complete, but is 
something in the process of making. It is hardly observ- 
able at birth; it is normally most evident at the end of 
man's career. It distinguishes man from all other ani- 
mals ; for while they and he begin alike and have much 
in common, and while no one can dogmatize as to the 
limits of their possibilities, man alone rises to the pos- 
session of actual, though still imperfect, personality. 
Every little child and the lowest savage possess at least 
potentialities in this direction. 

We know true personality best in the well-developed 
and highest types of men, as we know fruit best when 
it is really ripe. There have been men and women 
throughout human history who have been true, gener- 
ous, faithful unto death, fearless, and kind. These quali- 
ties alone would not perhaps have constituted them 
persons. What makes their personality is a certain 
unity in their lives, whereby all their experiences and 
their acts tend to become harmonized, as it were, and 
to move in one direction. If the atom may be con- 
sidered as a tiny centre or vortex of force, we can by 
a parable say that the life of a person is some such 
centre of spiritual force. Let us call this spiritual force 
love or good will. The noblest life is doubtless that 
in which all its powers and gifts — the more of them, 
the better — move in unison with the ruling good will. 
Here is a kind of life on which you can depend ; it will 
not disappoint you; it will grow more noble and con- 
sistent; it will increase in its momentum; it is a thing 
of beauty ; all men love and admire it. 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 13 

Grant for a moment that there had been only one 
such life of a refined and all-round person ; it would be 
the most wonderful and significant human fact that 
men could study. No investigation of physical things 
could begin to be so interesting and important as the 
evolution of a single complete, normal, and ripened life. 
Here is one who has the secret of happiness ; here is 
promise of finding out to what man may attain. Is 
it possible to develop other mature and normal lives, 
such as this was ? The fact is, that we have not only 
a single life worthy to be called a true person ; we have 
an increasing number of such lives. We are accumu- 
lating the biographies of a legion of noble personalities. 
There were never so many produced as in the past 
century. We begin to see the human conditions upon 
which their development depends. They are largely 
spiritual conditions. No man can be accounted a stu- 
dent of science who would neglect the consideration 
of these facts of personality. Do we not believe in per- 
sonality ? If not, what do we believe in, or what value 
is there in studying the processes of life and not coming 
to the secret of life itself ? 

Let us consider a moment the extraordinary im- 
pression that the righteous or noble personality always 
makes on our minds, and this in its fulness, the more 
mature we are ourselves. Take the instance of Jesus. 
It is not necessary to believe that his risen body passed 
through closed doors and appeared to his disciples. The 
deeper fact is that his person seemed to those who knew 
him to be above the range of death. That which con- 
stituted him a person was not that which died. We 
are not speaking in this instance of some evanescent 
quality, like the perfume of a flower, but of that which 



14 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

.was the heart and essence of the man's being, his very 
self. Such is the nature of the person at its best. 
There is no word to call it by that seems more accu- 
rately to describe it than the term " immortal." This 
word alone carries the impression which such a life 
makes on beholders. We are not saying that this 
impression must therefore be true, but we are inclined 
to think that, if all lives were so complete as some 
whom we have heard of and known, no one would doubt 
that man is "immortal." 

We tend to believe that this is a world of purpose. 
This is only to think that the universe must have 
significance. A purposeless universe seems to us con- 
temptible. It may be said that our own minds impress 
this idea upon us, and the desire to find purpose cre- 
ates our belief. But our minds are themselves the out- 
growth or the children of the universe. The nature 
of intelligence is to seek order, significance, purpose. 
It cannot be irrational to trust this character of our 
minds. It would look as if the highest faculty in us 
answered to the highest fact of the universe. The 
contrary supposition certainly reduces all thought to 
mockery. 

Now, the idea of immortality is almost the only means 
of expressing our thought of a purposeful universe. To 
say that the highest values do not die, to say that noble 
persons go on in their personality, to think that the uni- 
verse exists to manifest and to develop this order of life, 
is to affirm a purpose worthy of the universe. Is there 
any other conceivable purpose ? If so, what is it ? For 
a universe of mere everlasting succession of shifting 
phenomena is not a rational universe. 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 15 

To believe in a purposeful universe is to believe in the 
integrity of the universe ; namely, that it is one, that it is 
orderly, and that it can be depended upon. All science 
really proceeds upon this faith. It is " faith," for though 
it grows out of our own experience and observation, we 
cannot absolutely demonstrate it. All philosophy is the 
attempt to think the facts of the world and of life into 
some harmony and unity. The very word "universe," 
that we use so glibly, is the expression of a conviction or 
faith in the integrity of the world. It would be strange 
and unreasonable to use this word to sum up the result of 
our impressions of visible or material things, and then, 
just where the interpretations of visible things touch the 
life of man, to stop saying " the universe," and to reduce 
the realm of human or spiritual facts to chaos. We are 
possessed by the intellectual necessity, if we think of a 
universe at all, to think of it so throughout. The pro- 
found facts of human personality must belong to the 
integrity of the universe and must be safeguarded and 
not brought to confusion by its laws. This is just what 
we mean when we utter our hope of immortality. There 
is that in the universe which does not merely play with 
man's life, which does not create its offspring, — Isaiah, 
Jesus, Dante, Lincoln, — and then blindly dash them to 
pieces, like foam on the beach. Such is our instinctive 
idea of the integrity of the world, without the faith in 
which both science and philosophy lose their way. 

To affirm our belief in the integrity of the world is 
also to conceive that we are ourselves a part of that 
integrity and that we partake of its nature ; I mean, of 
course, at our best, and as we become more completely 
persons. We differ herein by a great height from the 



16 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

merely animal life. We share with the animals in the 
elements which compose our bodies, but we are lifted 
above the animal world in the sense of the order, the 
beauty, the intelligence, the movement and evolution of 
life, the conception of purpose — all that constitutes ideal, 
intellectual, or spiritual integrity. We are as much chil- 
dren of the universe on this most rational side of it, as we 
are its children on the side of our physical environment. 
Men sometimes ask whether, if man is immortal, he 
must not always have existed ? We may well afford to 
let this mystery pass. The main fact is, that in all that 
makes man most human he seems to partake, now and 
here, of that spiritual substance which conceives, ordains, 
and creates the world. He enters into the vastness, the 
complexity, and the unity of its scheme as if it were a 
drama unrolled for his understanding and his delight. 
He and the great Dramatist must be akin. For it is 
not credible that man made the drama out of his dreams. 
Whence then the dreams ? 

It is a world of startling possibilities. The last 
hundred years have witnessed an astonishing series 
of developments on the physical side. The most ex- 
traordinary predictions have come true. The most un- 
expected powers have been developed, as if men had 
only to turn them on and use them. The most hidden 
secrets have opened up to light. The range of mystery 
surrounding man's sight has been transfigured from a 
realm of darkness into blue sky, full of stars and light. 
The wonder is not that man is so little, but that he is 
so mighty. He inhabits a world of infinite possibility. 
There appears a profound law of prayer underlying all 
things. In less mystical terms, there tends to be some 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 17 

provision to meet every genuine need or desire. It is as 
if it were written : " Whatever is best, that shall come 
to pass. Ask and ye shall receive." 

Shall we trust this law of our nature in all outward 
things and stop trusting it in the one sphere where life 
becomes significant and most human ? The possibilities 
stretch in every direction. The unexpected happens. 
Geniuses, intellectual and spiritual, come to birth. New 
ranges of character and happiness disclose themselves. 
New necessities are laid upon us. 

It is here that the old parable of the chrysalis and the 
butterfly has its significance. It is only a parable, but 
it happens beautifully to illustrate the marvellous law 
of surprises with which nature forever meets us. It is 
no objection to the action of nature to urge that we can- ' 
not see how a thing can be done. Again and again the 
thing is done that we would not have dared to believe 
possible. It is as if we were traversing a winding road 
among forests and hills and streams. We come to places 
where the way seems blocked by towering cliffs, and we 
march to what seems the edge of a chasm. As we go, 
the way turns and opens and shows great stretches of 
view that we never had imagined. This is the nature of 
the world we live in. It is no monotonous or machine- 
made universe. Its waters break out of solid ice; at a 
little change of their particles they leap out of our sight 
and become invisible and expanding power. " We know 
not what we shall be." 

There is no article of more common faith than that this 
is somehow a moral world. This is the faith of the best 
thinkers. It shows no sign of abatement because men 
study science, On the contrary, Franklin and Darwin 



18 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

and Huxley and Haeckel are always teaching us to tell 
the truth and be honest. Why? Because the world of 
facts and the world of men and the history of mankind 
urge tremendous lessons upon us, and all in one direction. 
"Be righteous," they say. "Be modest, be truthful, be 
humane; show your good will; do good and not evil." 
Here is the way of life. These are the very values which 
we saw enter into the constitution of personality, as the 
iron and lime enter into our bones. They are in us be- 
cause they are in the structure of the universe. How 
else ? We made them ourselves no more than we made 
the iron, or created electricity, or invented gravitation. 
We are what we are because we participate in the moral 
structure which belongs to the universe and which there- 
fore impresses itself upon us. 

An appeal to justice is often made in favor of immor- 
tality. Men have suffered innocently here, and they 
ought, it is said, to have compensating satisfaction some- 
where else. But this appeal to justice is in itself an 
expression of a faith in an ideal or just universe. It im- 
plies a standard of right. So far, then, this expectation of 
justice, sure sometime to be made manifest, is an instinc- 
tive tribute of human nature to the conception of an 
ideal universe. The hope of immortality is wrapped up 
in the thought of a just world. 

We have referred to the idea of an "immortality of 
influence," which many good agnostics and high-minded 
men of science are pleased to recommend for the sub- 
stance of hope. Of course this is not immortality at all. 
But the fine thought behind it is another tribute to a 
fundamental idealism that characterizes noble natures. 
Where is this mystery of influence that we all acknowl- 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 19 

edge and believe in ? It is not in physics or chemistry or 
climatic conditions. It is in the invisible realm of thought 
and emotion. It makes men humane and sets up new 
currents of action and will in them. Whoever talks of 
influence expresses his faith in a spiritual universe. Im- 
mortality is only another of the terms used by the citi- 
zens of that universe. 

I have said hardly a word about God. We care for 
facts and not for names. But the play of a blind power, 
the motion of atoms, or even of an infinite multitude of 
mystic centres of life, would not constitute a universe. 
Unity itself is essentially an intellectual or spiritual 
conception. Even to talk of force comes near to saying 
will. What we discover in the universe and in ourselves 
as a part of the universe, — power, intelligence, order, 
purpose, integrity, unity, and especially that which we 
find in the most mature and perfect men, namely, right- 
eousness and good will, — all this goes to describe a 
person. We mean a person in no narrow and material 
sense, but in the only sense in which personality can 
exist, that is, in the realm of thought and spirit. We 
have facts or qualities which cannot possibly be detached 
from one another, or supposed to exist each by itself. 
They are facts which cohere and tend to make a har- 
mony. They imply a kernel of reality. They are facts 
which man only discovers, but does not create. It is 
under the impress of these facts, peculiar to personality, 
that in all times men have tended to some thought of 
God. They cannot lightly shake off this thought. It 
stands for the only rational answer to what would other- 
wise be the blind enigma of existence. It is mysterious 
enough, but so also is our own existence as persons. It 



20 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

is no harder to demonstrate than is the fact of the person- 
ality or selfhood of our friends. All incongruous appear- 
ances to the contrary, the men around us on the whole 
impress us as persons and not as bodies only. Their 
faces, often impassive or expressionless or even forbidding 
to us, at times flash out messages, thoughts, and the con- 
viction of a guiding purpose, and we believe in them, and 
love them accordingly in a manner that transcends the 
physical senses. So we seem to receive flashes of intelli- 
gence, purpose, good will, out of the heart of the universe, 
and we believe in it as the seat of an infinite personal life. 
The mind rests in this thought, as it rests in no other 
thought. The phenomena of the world fall into order 
under this thought as they will not otherwise. Especially 
as we live in fidelity to this thought, and try the experi- 
ments which it requires of us, we find life at its fullest 
degree of satisfaction. This thought of God seems to 
match with other things and to bind them together and 
to complete the integrity. Out of this thought of God 
grows all religion." And man seems to be constituted to 
need some kind of religion. 

It is interesting to observe that in all ancient pantheons, 
there were plenty of gods, but no real persons. The gods 
were like so many quarrelling and arrogant men — only 
persons in the making. The modern idea of the immanent 
God at last brings us the conception of full personality. 
Here is the unity of power, thought, beauty, and good- 
ness. Here is perfect good will, manifesting itself in a 
divine purpose of bringing its creation, its children, to 
the fulfilment of personality like its own. Take this at 
first as a working theory, as one takes the idea of gravi- 
tation in the physical realm, and see how all problems, 
intellectual and practical, fall into lines of order. 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 21 

Pause here a moment and see what it means that man 
should ever have dared to dream of such a thought of 
God. Confuse all his thinking, shatter his faith, smother 
his aspirations, reduce him to the ashes of the barest and 
most narrow form of materialism, yet you can never again 
think meanly of the creature, risen out of the dust, in 
whose thought has been created the beautiful temple of 
such a faith. If he is not a child of God, then, as has 
been wittily remarked, a God ought to be created to ac- 
count for the glorious audacity of this mere creature of a 
day. Again, as ever before, we find ourselves not be- 
tween a difficult belief and an easy denial, but face to face 
with an incredible kind of denial, which baffles thought 
and makes science and philosophy alike barren. 

The hope of immortality is no doubt an outgrowth or 
consequence of the thought of God. Men can never 
prove it by itself as an isolated dogma. It is a part of 
the integrity of religion itself. It is here that we dis- 
trust any alleged material proof of immortality. If our 
existence is not involved in the warp and woof of the 
spiritual structure of the world, if our nature is not of 
the immortal order, then while you might prove that the 
spirits of the dead continue to exist in some strange 
whispering gallery beyond our usual reach, this would 
not be immortal life. 

See now what it means when we venture in any real 
sense to say that " we believe in God, " in other words, 
that purposive goodness is in the heart and essence of 
the universe. We are bound to believe at a leap that the 
best possible will come to pass. The intelligence and the 
power of the universe are pledged to work out a destiny 
worthy of the scale of the infinite thought. This is in- 



22 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

volved in the integrity of the universe, and in its rationality. 
The preposterous will not be suffered to happen. We could 
not respect a God, much less worship or love any being, 
who brought ranks of creatures into existence, shared the 
mightiest thoughts with them, inspired infinite hopes in 
them, lifted the noblest of them into rapturous communion 
with Himself, continually unfolded their minds and hearts 
and disclosed the unexhausted capacities of their being, 
only to drop them into nothingness, as children blow 
their soap-bubbles and drop them out of the window to 
burst and vanish. Is this all that God can do ? We do 
not find this credible. The fact is, the thought of im- 
mortality grows right out of the heart of our faith in 
theism. You cannot separate them from each other. 

A word may naturally be expected here touching the 
common expectation of the world about future rewards 
and punishments. Justice demands, it is thought, that 
the unequal conditions of human life shall sometime be 
equalized. Without venturing to claim so much as this, 
without daring to assail the moral order as unjust even 
in this life, insisting that except in a moral world it is 
meaningless to talk of justice or injustice, we are bound 
to say that human existence at least points toward and 
seems to call for some adequate fulfilment. We see in 
each life the beginnings of the making of a person ; we 
interpret even failures and crimes into the terms of moral 
discipline ; we look for an outcome worthy of the cost 
and pain. No outcome except the final winning of per- 
sonality satisfies our minds. We ask for no childish 
system of rewards ; we do want, by a deep law of our be- 
ing, to be of some use in the universe. The only way to 
be of use is through the growth of our personality. But 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 23 

the life of this world is not enough to fulfil our personal- 
ity — a name to describe a sort of infinite growth. 

The hope of immortality is not a mere subject of 
thought ; it has to do with a man's power and essential 
well-being. We ask what the factors are that constitute 
a normal or healthy life, or, in other words, what makes a 
life most efficient and happy ? One of these factors clearly 
is a righteous purpose ; another is good will ; the element 
of hope is another. A man may live without hope, but he 
can never be at his best so. Take away all hope and 
you have diminished his life power. 

May not the man, however, have hope in his heart and 
yet not in any sense think of immortality? Doubtless, 
indeed, many persons find hope in the notion of a post- 
humous influence, or in a dream of coming fame, as chil- 
dren in a beleaguered and doomed city might think of 
to-morrow's play. My point is that hope, while it may 
live in a vague way without any definite object, tends to 
die at the roots with the denial of immortality. This 
kind of denial, if outright, becomes, the more one considers 
it, a fatal limitation. The larger a man's nature, the 
more you have hurt him the moment you have cut off 
all sky view, as it were, from his sight and shut his soul 
within finite walls. Suffer him a bare window-pane 
through which a star may shine, and his soul will live. 
Deny him all rays of the infinite possibilities, and the 
man will never be the same in moral or spiritual health. 
We know this by experience, having made experiments 
with ourselves and having swayed at times from the 
mood of hope to the mood of utter doubt. It was as if 
the spiritual temperature had gone down toward the line 
of death. 



24 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

The fact that the hope of immortality quickens the flow 
of all our interests and makes life seem worth while, the 
fact that the man with this hope in his heart is more 
alive and effective, and that the denial of the great hope 
lowers the moral temperature, does not demonstrate im- 
mortality. But the fact is very significant. So far as 
we believe in a universe, here is one of the harmonies 
that go to constitute it. So far as we believe in the 
intellectual integrity of the world, here is another point 
out of many, where it is really easier to believe that 
nature is true in stirring hopes in us and making them 
essential to our best life, than that she is playing false 
with us. Do not the biologists tell us to trust in what- 
ever makes life richer or more effective? 

This factor of hope is specially bound up with our social 
and moral activity. Granted the hope of immortality, we 
have a different kind of world from that world from which 
hope is closed. It is as different as a voyage to a port on 
a splendid ship is different from floating on a loose raft 
in mid ocean. This is not to deny that heroism might be 
shown on the raft, for example, by dropping off the raft 
to give more room and food for the survivors. But no 
one would exert himself very much to propel the hopeless 
raft, unless a ship appeared on the horizon. So while 
we might and would maintain the kind of negative moral- 
ity which consists in doing no injury to our neighbors, 
unless in an atmosphere of hope we should lack the virile 
and positive moral earnestness which urges men to ardu- 
ous and costly efforts for liberty, for democracy, for new 
standards of humanity. We do not need to say "Let us 
eat and drink for to-morrow we die." If we are noble, we 
can never say this. But the very word " noble " appeals 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 25 

to the thought of the saeredness and significance of human 
life, to the idea of spiritual values, to the hope of human 
progress. To deny immortality is to deny the very values 
to the sense of which all heroism appeals. Who could 
feel the slightest enthusiasm in efforts to crowd the land 
with millions of people, all furnished with model houses 
and a living wage, but believing nothing and hoping 
nothing beyond their brief span of years, more than the 
comfortable cattle on which they fed ? Better, we say, 
to have been thrown to the lions in the Coliseum, better 
to have marched to death with Joan of Arc, better to 
have been mobbed with Garrison or Love joy, than to live 
in a world where the eternal visions had perished. But 
when we say this, we go over to that side where hope 
springs immortal again and will not die. 

This is to say that all the magnificent words which 
make literature, and ring through literature and poetry 
like battle-cries to rally men to their highest modes of 
action, — justice, truth, virtue, heroism, the good, the best, 
— such words, bespeaking man's spiritual nature, group 
themselves with the words " hope " and " immortality. " 
They stand or fall together. Eaise your estimate of one 
of these words, and you unconsciously raise your estimate 
of all. Depreciate any one of them, and you depreciate 
all alike. Set a price or a limit upon the worth of virtue 
and you have limited your vision of all things hoped for. 
Set a finite limit upon hope, and you have set the same 
finite limit upon virtue or truth. You have even depreci- 
ated also the value of logic and reason. 

We may think of three departments that make the 
unity of life, — thought, feeling, and conduct or practice. 



26 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

There is no subject which, does not fall under these three 
dimensions. There is no subject which we really under- 
stand unless we know it in each of these three aspects. 
Even with the study of mathematics, goes the natural 
sense of admiration at its beautiful exactness and its 
infinite ranges, as well as an impulse to experiment in 
the handling of concrete numbers and forms. The hope 
of immortality, likewise, is not a mere mode of feeling any 
more than it is a startling subject of intellectual curios- 
ity ; it also touches the practical life. Each man has his 
choice, either to live as if the hope of immortality were 
a delusion, or as if it were valid. Here are two different 
modes of conduct. The same man with this hope veri- 
tably added to his possessions is a different man in temper 
and behavior from the man he would be with this hope 
subtracted from his being. See how much this means. 
Let us state our argument in the following form : — 

It is generally agreed that no physicist has demon- 
strated or can possibly demonstrate the denial of immor- 
tality. He can no more deny than he can demonstrate. 
On the other hand, every one must admit that on the 
side of man's essential humanity, there are a whole 
series of striking considerations which have always 
suggested some profound fact underlying the thought 
of immortality. There is therefore plenty of room 
to hope. To say the least, it is as intelligent to 
hope as to deny. We may then legitimately make ex- 
periments with ourselves and watch their outcome. We 
can take the idea of immortality as a working theory, as 
we may and often do take theism. We may live a day, 
or a month, or a year, on the basis of this theory, and act 
accordingly. We act thus as the children of eternity. 
We treat and respect ourselves, we treat and respect 



THE HOPE OF IMMOBTALITY 27 

other men as beings of an immortal nature. All mean- 
ness, injustice, selfishness, is straightway ruled out of our 
lives. Anxieties and fears cease for the man who con- 
ceives of himself as upon an immortal course. We have 
immediately lighted upon a great secret of the happy 
life. No man ever truly made the sort of practical ex- 
periment in conduct that befits the hope of immortality 
without a distinct lift in the range of his being. Nei- 
ther does he in this kind of experiment shut his eyes to, 
much less deny, a single known fact. He simply puts 
his emphasis upon the facts that make him a man, rather 
than upon the facts that constitute his body. 

We are here probably using the same kind of reason- 
ing which Professor William James applies under the 
somewhat obscure name of " pragmatism." Dr. Washing- 
ton Gladden calls it " The Practice of Immortality." We 
discover that a man cannot possibly behave too nobly. 
The nearer his conduct becomes to that of an immortal 
being, the better it is for him in heart, mind, body, and 
all. He is thus most closely a complete man and at the 
height of his personality. 

Now, we have no other test of truth than that it is 
whatever fits or makes harmony, or, more plainly, works 
well. We tend to believe in a thing if, without fatal 
drawbacks, it is good for use. We believe in most human 
propositions on this basis. We believe, for example, in 
the monogamous family, in popular education, or in the 
democratic theory of government. We follow a good clew 
as far as it will carry us. So in practical conduct, we 
follow the hope of immortality. It not only makes the 
harmony or unity which we need in our thinking, but, 
better yet, it fits into practice at once and goes to make 
life effective and whole. 



28 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

Professor James has written on " The Will to Believe." 
We suspect that these words and the form of his argument 
must carry a prejudice to many minds. We scorn to be- 
lieve merely by force of will. We will not consent to 
believe or to hope, unless for good reason. We will not 
believe a thing merely because it is pleasant. But we 
purpose none the less to be good investigators. We are 
quite willing therefore to take the attitude of hope — as 
legitimate an attitude as that of doubt ; we take it, not by 
sheer force of will, but so far as grand spiritual considera- 
tions and humane sympathies naturally urge us toward 
it. We will watch what happens to us ; we will be on our 
guard against false conclusions. We will not shut our- 
selves away from the climate of hope on the ground that 
it is a healthy climate to live in. Other things being 
equal, this is precisely the reason why we should live in it. 

What if it should prove that the hope of immortality 
grows naturally out of the practice of a certain worthy 
kind of life, and cannot be easily had except upon the 
terms of such a life? This is to say that immortality 
belongs to persons. This is to say that its quality begins 
here and now in so far as men become persons. The lower 
and the less unified the personality, the less reason has 
any one to be persuaded of immortality. The more we 
care for personality, the higher we conceive it, the more 
we grow toward it, the more instinctively we are pos- 
sessed with the thought that it cannot die. 

This accounts for our swaying moods from hope to 
doubt and back again. This accounts for the differences 
of attitude between various men. Do we drop to a vul- 
gar mood and think in terms of bricks or money? In 
our lowest moods no argument for immortality avails 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 29 

much with us. Do we catch sight of some great person- 
ality, — an Emerson, a Channing, Marcus Aurelius ? Do 
we see for the moment what such a personality is worth 
beyond all visible treasures? Then in this our highest 
mood whole ranges of vision move us to hope. Show us 
persons enough, stir us often enough to aspire to be 
persons, and we should habitually expect immortality. 
In other words, the hope of immortality tends to be a 
sort of measure of our spiritual health and growth. 

Is not this, again, what we should expect in a moral 
universe ? The hope of immortality is not a cheap thing; 
it is costly. It is not an idea that can be had merely for 
the reading of books ; it cannot be demonstrated in an 
evening at a lecture hall by " materializations " ; it cannot 
even be had on the strength of the bodily reappearance 
of the best man who ever lived. It depends upon char- 
acter and grows out of character. It goes with the daily 
practice of immortality. Otherwise, it is only at best a 
matter of temperament, tradition, and hearsay. 

A very important consideration follows. All that the 
reason can do with any problem touching conduct is to 
give advice. The reason can pronounce that a certain 
course seems on the whole worth while to entertain and 
pursue. Its advice is like a permissive bill enacted by a 
legislature. Whether one takes such advice or not, de- 
pends upon a distinct motion of the will. So now with 
the thought of immortality, the reason gives its permis- 
sion to move in the direction of a magnificent hope. " Go 
over, if you will, " says the reason, " to the side of the hope, 
and let the hope sway you. Do not fear any longer to 
let yourselves go." Many persons need to take this coun- 
sel to heart. The reason has done all that it can. It 



30 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

unties their chains and sets them free. The way of the 
open sky lies before them. Let them set forth, and take 
the good of their hope, and see what comes of it. Hope, 
like every other normal function, grows by exercise. Right 
as we were to pause and refuse to move, while the direct- 
ing mind asked time to consider, as soon as the mind gives 
us even as much as the freedom of a mighty "Perhaps" 
or " Suppose, " we now become wise in taking all the 
freedom that belongs to us. For we are not creatures of 
reason alone, but of heart and will and life also. 

We may now fairly ask whether there is not a certain 
reality in the old-fashioned idea of authority, namely, that 
certain persons have been endowed with the right to teach 
their fellows the doctrine of immortality ? We answer, Yes, 
there are authorities, albeit not infallible, touching every 
subject of human interest. Thus we listen to the testimony 
of every good man who speaks out of his experience of the 
facts of the good life. We pass judgment on the com- 
parative sanity and soundness of men who speak on this 
subject, as on every other subject. On certain points we 
find a growing tendency to a consensus of experience and 
opinion. Such a consensus of the noble and high-minded 
does rightly move our minds, not to follow in blindness, 
but to listen with respect. 

Here is the authority of such a Master in the good life 
as Jesus was. Did he feel within himself the stirrings 
of an immortal nature? Did he have visions of per- 
sonality for which this earthly life seemed a mere be- 
ginning? We are impressed that he was a real man 
and spoke out of genuine experience. What if he and 
others saw more than the average man has yet seen ? 
At our best, we tend to see and to say very similar 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 31 

things. Whatever any human being has tried and dis- 
covered for himself to be real, becomes authoritative to 
persuade us to make trial of the same. In this sense 
there was never so much authority for the idea of im- 
mortality as there is to-day. The world never had ac- 
cess to so many of the lives of the wise, the noble, and 
the true-hearted, the men of veritable religion, as it has 
to-day. With all degrees of caution and assurance the 
cheering voices come to us of those who sing as they go 
with their faces to the light. Those who give this tes- 
timony are not the selfish, they are not the light-minded, 
they wish no mere gift of years ; they desire no idle 
heaven ; they pray rather to be useful ; they have lived 
the life of good will, and they trust that good will is the 
most enduring force in the universe. They go out into 
the mystery as those ready to do the deeds of good will 
forever. They approve themselves to us as worthy to be 
called citizens of the universe, for there is no conceivable 
place where they would not be at home. They seem to 
us of the nature of the infinite life at the heart of the 
world. We do not think that we shall be misled in fol- 
lowing their lead. 

I have no idea of making a chain of so many links to 
compel assent. On the contrary, I have simply tried to 
set forth the mass of considerations that always and in- 
creasingly urge my own mind, even in its most sceptical 
moods, to face toward the way of hope. I have dealt 
with facts at every step, not indeed facts that can be 
studied with the help of the microscope, but neverthe- 
less the solid facts in which human life consists. What 
impresses me is that these facts all go together and point 
one way. They are cumulative. They belong to a cer- 



32 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

tain unity which you cannot break without doing vio- 
lence to every essential part of the whole. The hope 
of immortality arises out of this unity of thought, feeling, 
and conduct. My conviction is that it is here, because 
it is true. 

This is really the same kind of reasoning that leads us 
to believe in the wonder and mystery of a physical uni- 
verse. We do not believe in this wonderful unity be- 
cause we can wholly demonstrate it by physical evidence- 
It is not even an apparent unity to a child or a savage. 
It is a unity which nature doubtless suggests, but we 
have to admit that it hardly could be at all except for 
the demand of our minds to discover unity. Our faith 
in a universe is not merely the outgrowth of the observa- 
tion of outward phenomena; it is also a sort of intel- 
lectual or spiritual necessity, without which the mind is 
baffled and stupefied. So, too, we find that the hope of 
immortality belongs to that deeper unity of thought and 
conception, of which our interpretation of the outward 
nature is merely an image. 

Finally, the'tremendous question recurs, How can these 
things be? This is the underlying mystery in all life. 
In this world of wonderful and dramatic possibilities, 
where the facts are daily more startling than any mira- 
cle, we not only do not need to know precisely how im- 
mortality may be, but we suspect that we are better off 
with the hope than we could be with a kind of knowledge, 
for which we are not yet ready or sufficiently developed. 
As it is well for the child that he cannot be told the 
experiences of manhood and parenthood, so it is well for 
men generally to be obliged to see the future as we see 
distant mountains in a haze of cloud-land. " Clouds 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 33 

and darkness are round about" them. It is enough that 
rifts of sunlight are in the clouds and the broad bases 
of the hills are there, whether we see their summits or not. 
Meantime golden hours of vision come to us in this 
present life, when we are at our best, and our faculties 
work together in harmony. There are times when 
intelligence is full and quick, our feelings are healthy, 
matching great thoughts, and good will possesses us. In 
these best hours the mere limits of space and time seem 
small; we appear to belong to a divine universe, we are 
admitted to share in the universal thought, we feel the 
unity of all things, we are at one through sympathy with 
all who live, toil, suffer, and aspire. We follow one pur- 
pose of beneficence. This is the sanest as well as the 
highest of human experiences. It purifies us, it both 
rests and inspires us for better work, more conscientious, 
wiser, more accurate, more disinterested, more effectual. 
We are in such hours most truly ourselves as individuals, 
or persons, while we seem to belong to the Universal Life 
— the one Person that constitutes the world. Is it not 
this of which Wordsworth writes ? — 

" that blessed mood, 
In which the burthen of the mystery, 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world, 
Is lightened, — that serene and blessed mood, 
In which the affections gently lead us on, — 
Until the breath of this corporeal frame 
And even the motion of our human blood 
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
In body, and become a living soul ; 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We see into the life of things." 



34 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

Does any one imagine the food which, we eat to be real, 
and these great experiences of life to be less real ? 

Here, then, is a sort of earnest or foretaste of the im- 
mortal life. We surmise that immortality is like this. 
At our highest and best we have discovered the quality 
of immortality. We are content; in view of certain 
supreme experiences which life offers here and now we 
say, "All is well." We cannot doubt that whatever 
comes will also be well. This is the faith of religion, grow- 
ing out of the most impressive facts. This faith grows 
equally out of the highest reaches of our intelligence. 



!UL 25 1908 



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